"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
-- Sinclair Lewis

Tuesday, December 23, 2003

[12/23/2011] Preview: If it's Christmas, it's time for "Messiah" and "The Childhood of Christ" (continued)

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Nicolai Gedda and Otto Klemperer

ONE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN OUR TWO WORKS . . .

. . . is that Messiah, like any well-behaved baroque oratorio, has an overture, or "symphony," and so we're going to hear the it from the same recording as our "Comfort ye" and "Every valley," conducted in a now-frowned-upon old-fashioned style -- and yet with conviction and some eloquence -- by Otto Klemperer. By contrast, the lone number we're hearing from L'Enfance du Christ is the actual, self-contained prologue, which leads directly into Part I, "Herod's Dream."

AccompagnatoComfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith your God; speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned.The voice that crieth in the wilderness: prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

-- Isaiah XL:1-3

AirEvery valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill made low: the crooked straight and the rough places plain.